Researchers who study Kaposi’s sarcoma have long searched for the exact causes of this cancer, which overwhelmingly strikes people with compromised immunity. They also needed a better way to search for those causes.

Work by University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers delivered both.

Previously, researchers studied the role of Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) in isolated cells in the lab, but that wasn’t an adequate way to test the disease given the complexity of an immune-compromised human patient. They suspected that a specific gene, the viral G protein coupled receptor gene (vGPCR), “switched on” Kaposi’s sarcoma. Enrique A. Mesri, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the Miller School of Medicine, and his colleagues are the first to conclusively link this gene with the cancer, which is common in HIV/ AIDS and organ transplant patients.

“Our most important finding was showing that the virus encoded genes with the potential for causing the disease,” says Mesri, who came to UM from Cornell University in 2005. He has studied KSHV since 1996 and published data in the prestigious journal Nature in 1998 linking vGPCR with new blood vessel growth.

The researchers were able to isolate the role of the gene through the creation of a novel animal model that realistically creates an environment much like Kaposi’s sarcoma in humans. Their work was published in the March 12 issue of the journal Cancer Cell.

A healthy immune system can suppress the virus, but a number of transplant patients and as many as one in 20 HIV-positive Americans will be afflicted with this KSHV-induced cancer. Clearly identifying the role of the vGPCR gene may offer a new therapeutic target—and having the new animal model gives researchers their best opportunity yet to study and maybe cure this disease.